Saturday, April 21, 2012

Spring Theory

Recently finished some rudder tooling so I should be on
the water again soon. Have also been spending some time with CAD looking
at foil shapes, which one might convincingly argue is a waste of time,
especially as things drawn on backs of napkins seem to have less drag
than their full-on professionally designed CFD counterparts.

Latest
numbers from the tank suggest the foil I put together with Greg in 2007 is still
some distance ahead of anything else upwind; hard to know about the top
end performance but if I had to choose a high camber section vs. a
reflexed flap, well, I guess the answer to that question is pretty
obvious by now.

Rudder tooling being done I'm on to a new mainfoil, for which purpose I put together a parametric Rhino file
to define the lifting surface so I can tweak it until the last possible
moment. Perhaps by then Nick Flutter will have the poor man's CFD
figured out enough to give it a whirl, but frankly if the accepted math
is at all representative of the real world it should be a big leap
forward from what I'm sailing (or not sailing) at the moment.

This all leaves much to be desired on the boathandling front, and
sailing is certainly enjoyable. I look forward to getting back on the
water soon, but in the interim I have to say designing and building my
own stuff is a fascinating counterpart, and one of the greatest things
about Mothing.